


I Will Await You Across the Sea

by antiviancrows



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-30
Updated: 2015-03-30
Packaged: 2018-03-20 08:07:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3642909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antiviancrows/pseuds/antiviancrows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is fire and determination and he is silent and wrathful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Will Await You Across the Sea

He followed her silently, a vengeful angel in the shadows. She took him on every mission, her pink armor glittering on the battlefield in the edges of his vision. He watched her back, kept her safe while she charged forward, staring death in the face. She came often and talked to him on the Normandy, the black dress so different from the impression he had gotten the first time he'd seen her. She moved like a huntress. 

She surprised him when she showed him she could work from the shadows too. She struck silently and ruthlessly. This was a drastic change from her usual methods of charging forward. They killed and they talked. Gradually, they opened up to each other more. 

He told her about her wife, the fierce determination that he'd seen in her eyes when she'd stepped in front of his target, and in turn he learned about her days in the streets of Earth, fighting like a common dog for the scraps the citizens left over. He told her how he'd killed the men who'd killed his wife, slowly, letting them linger. He learned how she was the hero of Elysium because of a battle she no longer remembered. 

He began to love her. He saw her as he'd seen his first wife, as a siha, as a warrior-angel. She loved him back with the fierce determination that made up everything she did, and he was afraid to die. It shamed him, and when he stormed into her cabin, all anger and shame and fear, she loved him all the more. 

He was not surprised when she kept everyone alive during the attack on the Collector base. She was determined and intelligent, and they had won. She had chosen to leave the base intact, and he did not doubt her. 

Then she turned herself into the Alliance. He did not doubt her, and he still loved her. 

When the Reapers attacked Earth, he feared the worst. Then, miraculously, she arose from the shadows and she was back on the Citadel, back to save the galaxy. He could not go with her. Kepral's Syndrome prevented that, but she loved him still just as he loved her. 

She visited often. She tried to ease the pain of his passing because they both knew it was the end. Still, she wore a black dress, and her armor was still pink. Her hair was still black and her eyes were still bright with that fierceness that no amount of losses could dim.

Then Kai Leng happened. Thane tried to save the salarian on the Council, and was told in his last moments that he had succeeded, but Cerberus had brought a knife to a gunfight and for a horrifying moment he had thought that Shepard would stop and stay with him. He had time. The Council did not. 

She went on, and he could see how much each step away from him hurt her. 

Later, he was lying on a hospital bed, his son and his siha in the room with him. He swallowed hard and he knew this was the end, and he could see how hard she was trying not to cry, and he began to pray for her. He was so far gone that he could not finish it, and his son had to end it, and he was surprised when she joined in. He didn't want to leave her, not like this, not then, but there was nothing either of them could do. She held in her tears until he was gone. 

"Meet you across the sea," she whispered, and with that, she left the Citadel. Fire burned within her, made brighter by her loss. Later, she would kill Kai Leng herself, running him through with a blade of her own, letting the bastard know it was for Thane. All of it was for Thane. She wasn't saving the galaxy for everyone else, not for her crew or the little boy she'd seen die. She was saving it for Thane, because he wanted to make the universe a better place and she wanted to carry on for him.

It almost seemed too easy when she was standing in front of the Catalyst, broken and bloodied and barely alive. She stared at the Crucible for a long time, three options presented before her, and in her last moments she chose to merge synthetic and organic, because she thought that was what he would have wanted. She saw Legion in his final moments, learning how to say "I," and she saw EDI and Joker on the bridge, and the last thing she saw with the perfect memory of a drell, was Thane.

It killed her. The Crucible had needed her life force to do it's job, and she gave it willingly. She knew nothing of the aftermath of her decision, but when her head broke the surface of the sea, he stood on the shore waiting for her. And she was happy, and the war was over, and he loved her.


End file.
